I’m well past tired of hearing faux-intellectuals pontificating on the ethical and moral implications of action sequences depicted in games. Most often this is presented as a question of how we are supposed to like Nathan Drake when over the course of a game he will kill hundreds of people. “Sure, they were pirates or mercenaries with violent intent, but they were still human! And the scale of death must have some psychological impact on the player character, must it not?” But this kind of navel gazing is simply more proof of how young the industry is, and how the[…]

For a long time I’ve had the bad habit of installing a ton of games on my phone and tablet but never actually playing them. I went through a phase where I downloaded a variety of the more popular titles like Puzzle and Dragons, Dungeon Link, Final Fantasy: Record Keeper and Terra Battle to sample. While I found something to like in a number of these games, none ever really hooked me. So there they languished, idly occupying space on my smartphone’s flash storage. Grand Sphere: Legend of the Dragon is a free to play mobile game from Silicon Studios,[…]

While Microsoft has made seamless multitasking between games and media apps, Sony has, since the PS4 reveal in Februrary been a bit cagey on the subject. Considering the large amount of RAM the PS4 includes and the multitasking features built into the PlayStation Vita real task switching felt like a sure inclusion, but it was not until last week the ability was confirmed in the above video released by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Item 10: In most situations you will be able to switch instantly between playing a game and other apps OR the dynamic menu.

I learned Ryan Davis had passed when I opened twitter Monday afternoon and followed a context free link to Dave Snider’s understated tribute site ThanksRyan.com. It only dawned on me slowly what I was looking at, and I swiftly began looking through my history only to discover nothing but further confirmation that he had died at the age of 24. Like a lot of people I took this news like a blow to the sternum. I never met the man, but the inevitable nature of Giant Bomb and the way Ryan, Jeff, Vinny, Brad, Patrick and Drew have opened their[…]

Microsoft has no idea what the fuck they are doing. This much has been obvious since last summer when they introduced “SmartGlass” as their next big “innovation”. I use sarcastic quotes because by “innovation” they mean using the tablet or smartphone you already own to do things the tablet or smartphone can natively do. Most damningly they took a preexisting Game of Thrones app for iPad, packaged it inside SmartGlass and pretended like this would change the world. It was an embarrassing attempt to insert an Xbox branded service where it does not belong. Unfortunately, this buttinski attitude is obviously[…]

At 6 PM Eastern Standard Time in New York City Sony is set to finally unveil the “Future of PlayStation”, something that has had certain sectors of the internet in a virtual tizzy for the last three weeks. At this point it is all but certain that the next generation PlayStation console will debut alongside something of a vision statement for the future Sony’s gaming division. Various leaks over the last few months, and even going back a year or two have already given us an inkling of the PS4’s capabilities, but it is an open question as to how[…]